Building Capacity for Climate and Sustainability in Infrastructure

IDB Invest, through its Advisory Services, aimed to support a Fund Manager (the name is confidential) in building capacities for both its staff and external stakeholders (SME contractors and suppliers) on climate mitigation and resilience as well as sustainability in the circular economy. The Fund Manager finances projects in the water and sanitation sector (WSS) in the state of São Paulo. 

IDB Invest contracted Econoler to support the Fund Manager in developing of a comprehensive capacity building plan for climate action that would help the Fund Manager and its partners to understand their current business model gaps and opportunities in terms of leveraging mitigation, adaptation, and sustainability initiatives through their portfolio, enable knowledge sharing between stakeholders regarding prioritized sustainability themes (circular economy, energy efficiency, climate resilience, and water loss), and ultimately scale insights through guidance documents, capacity building, and tools.

Under the mandate, Econoler carried out the following tasks: 

• Conducted interviews with Fund Manager staff involved in monitoring results and indicators to identify their capacity building needs;
• Conducted interviews with Fund Manager SME suppliers and contractors implementing projects in the WSS to understand their capacities and limitations as well as identify their capacity building needs;
• Conducted a workshop with Fund Manager staff and SME suppliers and contractors on energy efficiency, climate resilience, circular economy, as well as environmental and social management systems and indicators for impact monitoring;
• Developed orientation materials and toolkits for Fund Manager employees as well as SME suppliers and contractors, including: Guidance documents on key themes (including energy efficiency, climate resilience, circular economy, environmental and social management systems and indicators for impact monitoring, and water losses) with practical case studies and/or toolkits on how to improve bidding proposals and incorporate key sustainability themes into proposals. The material included a list of key performance indicators (KPIs) per sustainability theme for the Fund Manager to track/measure impacts and uptake of climate and sustainability capacities in its portfolio;
• Delivered training to Fund Manager staff as well as SME suppliers and contractors;

Reported on lessons learned and specific tips on how to continue to build climate and sustainability capacities so Fund Manager staff can increase awareness among suppliers.